A 'Whisperer' Howl of Triumph, From the Curb Up

By EDWARD WYATT

Published: May 23, 2006

In his journey from illegal immigrant to television star, Cesar Millan, a best-selling author and dog trainer to the Hollywood elite better known as television's ''Dog Whisperer,'' has not forgotten the little people who helped him along the way.

They are thanked, right up front, in ''Cesar's Way,'' his guide to understanding and correcting common dog problems: Jada Pinkett Smith, Oprah Winfrey, Anthony Robbins, Deepak Chopra, Dr. Phil McGraw.

Also, ''the women who ran a grooming parlor in San Diego and who hired me when I first came to the United States. Forgive me for not recalling your names.''

It is an unusual example of Mr. Millan's forgetfulness, explainable perhaps by understanding that the Dog Whisperer rarely looks back. In his dog-training methodology, in his business and elsewhere, he is the pack leader.

Evidence of the primacy of Mr. Millan in all his efforts comes with today's release of the DVD collection ''Dog Whisperer With Cesar Millan: The Complete First Season.'' Though ''Dog Whisperer'' is the top-rated show on the National Geographic Channel, National Geographic's name and familiar logo are nowhere on the DVD's front cover.

Instead, Cesar Millan is the brand.

''This is not a flash-in-the-pan sort of thing,'' said Jim Milio, one of the three founders of MPH Entertainment, which produces Mr. Millan's show along with Emery/Sumner Productions, and who has helped to guide Mr. Millan's efforts to build an ambitious business enterprise. ''This is not one year and he's gone. We're making him into a long-lasting brand,'' with more books and videos and dog-training aids and, well, who knows?

It was thanks to the efforts of his producers, for example, that Mr. Millan kept all the home video and foreign syndication rights to his television show. That has allowed him to create, in addition to the 10-hour complete collections, which retails for nearly $50, several shorter collections that will be widely available for less than $10 each. Wal-Mart and Sam's Club are expected to feature them at the front of their stores.

Mr. Millan's fame has grown to the point where he was recently parodied on an episode of ''South Park,'' the Comedy Central staple.

To hear Mr. Millan tell it, he planned it all exactly this way. Even as he evaded border patrols while following a paid guide from Tijuana into Southern California, he said recently, ''my goal was just to become the best dog trainer in the world.'' Now a legal immigrant, he is married to an American citizen and planning to apply for citizenship himself.

''And my goal was always Hollywood,'' he added. ''Where I'm from, the only thing you hear is Hollywood and Disneyland. You don't hear Texas, you don't hear Ohio, you don't even hear New York. My target was Hollywood because that was the only thing I knew.''

Mr. Millan, 36, started by working in the early 1990's in a San Diego dog-grooming studio, where he gained a reputation for working well with the hard-to-handle cases. He asked neighbors to let him walk their dogs. People noticed how he could calm even the fiercest creatures, and word of mouth, the most effective form of advertising and promotion, followed him north to Los Angeles.

Working with Americans and their dogs, he said, ''I was surprised and a little confused by what I saw.'' Where he grew up, in Culiacan, Sinaloa, in Northwest Mexico, ''everybody walks dogs,'' Mr. Millan said during a recent visit to New York. ''But where I am from, the dog is always behind. Here the dog is always in front. I thought maybe you guys were doing it right and we were doing it wrong. Because to me America is the country where everybody is always doing it right. I thought you knew and we were wrong.''

He quickly discovered: no. Americans were letting the dogs, rather than the humans, be the pack leaders, in almost every respect. ''Americans work against Mother Nature, and that's why dogs don't listen to the general population of America,'' he said. ''Why are dogs growing up on a farm much happier than a dog living in the city? Because on a farm, it gets to be a dog. And in the city they become a child, they become a husband, they become a soul mate. They become something the human wants before they are willing to do what is best for them.''

That, in turn, translates to dogs behaving badly. At Mr. Millan's Dog Psychology Center in Los Angeles, he works with dozens of dogs at a time. He first drew attention for his walks through Los Angeles with his packs -- he on in-line skates, the dogs on leashes -- or his runs along the beach or through the Santa Monica Mountains with them. Always, Mr. Millan is at the head of the pack.

''It's like cowboys,'' he said. ''They grow up around the horse and the cow; they are not afraid of them. You can be a huge dog lover, you can have a passion for it, but that doesn't mean you can develop the strong assertive state of mind that is required to be around hard-core cases. These cases I work with, they are coming after me. But I don't develop fear. Like the people who work around cobras -- they don't have fear in their mind. What makes you become a pack leader is being in a calm, assertive state 100 percent of the time.''

Whether he can remain calm and assertive in the wake of his fame and growing fortune will be interesting to watch; in addition to those, Mr. Millan is starting to draw the scrutiny that in America inevitably follows -- that is, lawsuits. Earlier this year, Flody Suarez, a television producer and former NBC executive, filed suit in state court charging that his dog, Gator, was severely injured and abused at the Dog Psychology Center. A former publicist for Mr. Millan, Makeda Smith, and a partner also sued Mr. Millan and the National Geographic Channel, contending that they helped to create the idea for a ''Dog Whisperer'' television series.

Mr. Millan would not comment on the lawsuits. In a statement, a spokesman for the National Geographic Channel also declined to comment on the litigation, adding that the Suarez dog's injuries were not related to the production of the show and that Mr. Millan was not at the center when the dog was there.

Still, Mr. Millan is hard to ruffle, something he says is essential to his training methods.

''It's a ripple effect,'' he said. ''I believe in the golden rule -- do good things and good things will happen to you. I know I help dogs all the time. And because you help Mother Nature, Mother Nature is going to help you back. There's no other way around. It's the law of the universe.''

Photos: Cesar Millan, the ''Dog Whisperer,'' in the full leader-of-the-pack mode that he has ridden to success. (Photo by National Geographic Channel)(pg. E1); Cesar Millan, in a 2002 photo, shows how he looks to most clients. (Photo by Beatrice De Gea/Los Angeles Times, via Associated Press)(pg. E7)